A new “First Amendment Report Card,” released by the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute, gives our First Amendment freedoms — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — a barely passing grade.

The grades were assigned by 15 panelists from across the political spectrum, some of them experts on First Amendment issues overall, and some who focus on specific areas such as religion or press.

Tennessee has been blessed with the Public Records Act, which provides for citizen access to public records.

These records include all documents, papers, letters, maps, books, photographs, microfilms, electronic data processing files and output films, sound recordings or characteristics, made or received pursuant to law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by any governmental agency.

That definition would seem to cover just about everything a journalist or any citizen might want to know.

Sending an “open letter” to President Trump has been in vogue these days.

Social activists, business moguls, media chieftains and political leaders all have penned a multitude of them since the November election. Some offer advice, some raise alarms, some offer praise and some just convey insults.

Our First Amendment freedoms will work — if we still have them around to use.

Those five freedoms — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — have been challenged at various times in our nation’s history, as many would say they are today.

But the very freedoms themselves provide the means and mechanisms for our society to self-correct those challenges, perhaps a main reason why the First Amendment has endured, unchanged, since Dec. 15, 1791.